Second phase of restoration work on Mont St Michel begins
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France's Centre des Monuments Nationaux is continuing its multi-stage restoration of the island abbey of Mont St Michel. This year the Norman-Gothic cloister and its 13th-century courtyard garden will get a €2.2m makeover.
This follows repairs in 2016 to the 19th-century gilded-copper statue of Archangel Michael that tops the abbey spire, and earlier projects to restore the roof and stained-glass windows.The abbey’s site and topography presented its builders with particular architectural challenges, and the cloister now requires both structural and cosmetic treatment. Rainfall into the garden is causing water to seep through the ceiling of the abbey scriptorium below. In the 19th century, the courtyard was paved over and rain was channelled into a cistern that fed water to the kitchen. However, the removal of the paving slabs and re-creation of the garden in 1965 has made remedial drainage work and improved damp-proofing necessary to better insulate the garden soil from the stone vaulting below.
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It's about time: NYU launches US first time-based media conservation graduate course
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The Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) at New York University (NYU) is preparing to launch a four-year graduate course in time-based media conservation. The degree is the first of its kind in the US and reflects the growing need for specialists in the field as the popularity of technology-based works increases.
Thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, classes will start in autumn 2018, with the first graduate students due to matriculate in 2022. NYU is one of only four graduate-level conservation programmes in the US (along with SUNY Buffalo State, Winterthur/University of Delaware and UCLA/Getty), and as of 2018 it will be the only one to offer a time-based media specialisation. Some European universities, however, have made time-based media conservation a priority for more than two decades. For example, Berlin’s Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft established media art courses in 1993 and Bern University of the Arts created its modern materials media programme in 1997.
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Colby College Museum of Art given 1,000-work collection
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The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine has received a donation worth more than $100m from the art collectors and honorary alumni Peter and Paula Lunder.
The gift adds over 1,000 works of art to the museum’s collection and will fund the launch of the Lunder Institute of American Art, a research centre that aims to advance critical and creative research in American art and related fields. The donated works span around 500 years and include paintings, sculptures, photographs, works on paper and other media by more than 150 artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claes Oldenburg and Ai Weiwei.
The Lunders, who previously gave more than 500 works of arts with an estimated value of $100m to the college and museum in 2007, say that the liberal arts college is “the perfect fit for our collection” and they have worked with the museum’s curatorial team “to strategically identify works that deepen its holdings”, according to a press release.
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British Museum-trained Iraqi archaeologist assesses Isil destruction of Nimrud
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An Iraqi archaeologist who was recently given emergency training by the British Museum is leading a rescue operation in Nimrud, the Assyrian site which was almost totally destroyed by Isil extremists. The archaeologist has been appointed by Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to investigate the damage and stablise what can be saved.
In April 2015 Isil militants destroyed the ninth-century BC palace of Ashurnasirpal II with its magnificent gypsum reliefs. Last September they flattened the city's Ziggurat. Nimrud, 35 kilometres south of Mosul, was retaken by government forces in November.
The Iraq Emergency Heritage Management Training Scheme, run by the British Museum and the Iraqi authorities, was established in 2015, soon after the destruction. Financed with £2.9m from the UK’s Cultural Protection Fund, it will train a total of 50 archaeologists over a five-year period with workshops in London and Iraq.
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Dutch Golden Age shines through at the Louvre
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The Louvre is going Dutch this spring with the reopening of its Northern European painting galleries and not one, but three exhibitions devoted to the art of Holland’s 17th-century Golden Age. A major survey, Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting, has been in the making for almost five years, says the curator Blaise Ducos. It is a co-production with the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where the show will travel later this year. Twelve of Vermeer’s characteristically quiet domestic interiors will be presented among rowdier genre scenes by more than a dozen of his peers, including Gerrit Dou and Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch and Frans van Mieris.
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Italian Renaissance specialist Miguel Falomir chosen to head up Prado
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The new director of the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid will be Miguel Falomir, the museums long-serving curator and current deputy director, according to Spanish press reports. The selection committee tasked with appointing a successor to the outgoing director of 15 years, Miguel Zugaza, voted unanimously for Falomir on 22 February. The trustees of the Prado are due to meet in mid-March to approve the decision, which must then be formalised by Spains Council of Ministers.
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We are all made of stars, part 3: from the Women’s March in Los Angeles back to Europe
Women’s March, Los Angeles, California, 21 January 2017
In Los Angeles, I remembered what was like to be in a liberal city. I realised that with the people I had met along the journey so far, I had to be careful about what I was saying to so as not to offend anyone.
We talked to a lot of the protesters who attended the march, and of course I related to most of them—but my vision of the US had changed. I could see how distant and disconnected these people were from the people I had met in the Southern states. We are fighting about a global ideology here, universal human rights. But can people care about the global when the local is in disarray?
To me, art and culture are the keys to social improvement. When I was walking with all those people in the Women’s March, I was thinking about that. What this country needs are serious links between the countryside and the cities. The local has got to be involved in the global and people are waiting for these bridges to be built. I believe that our journey could be such a bridge.
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Magazzino, new Hudson Valley arts space for Italian art, to open this summer
New York’s Hudson Valley is gaining a new arts destination this summer with the launch of Magazzino, a converted warehouse turned arts space that will show postwar and contemporary Italian works of art from the collection of Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu. The 20,000 sq ft space (which includes a small library) has been revamped by the architect Miguel Quismodo and is located on the Hudson River in the town of Cold Spring, around 60 miles from Manhattan.
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Olnick and Spanu created the private space with the aim to expose the work of Italian artists who have “made a significant contribution to society and yet are not widely recognised in the US”, the collectors told The Art Newspaper by email. The warehouse “will be a platform to showcase the artists’ talent and influence”, they added. The inaugural show, due to open on 28*June, will focus on the late gallerist Margherita Stein, who is best-known for promoting artists associated with the Spatialism and Arte Povera movements. Magazzino will offer free admission, however it will be open by appointment only.
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All you need is LOVE (and a good conservator)
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Eagle-eyed visitors to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) have no doubt noticed that one of gallery’s most prized works, Robert Indiana’s LOVE (1970), is not in its usual location. The sculpture, which is the original version of the artist’s popular series, was removed from its home on the mall outside the museum in January to undergo much-needed conservation work.
Decades of exposure to the elements have taken their toll, with water infiltration being the main preservation issue. The sculpture suffers from external and internal corrosion, leading to holes and split seams. Also of concern are the orange and red streaks that mar the work’s original appearance. Unlike later versions, in painted aluminium, the IMA’s LOVE is crafted from Cor-Ten steel—a relatively new material when Indiana made this piece. The paint on his later aluminium pieces offers an extra layer of protection.
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